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Future EU Finances and Own Resources

I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman. He has not been here during the debate, and I am not prepared to take as absurd an intervention from him as the one he made on the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet. The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) said that the UK should pay its fair share for the enlargement of the EU, but he was concerned about the transitional arrangements. The Scottish Highlands and Islands have done very well out of the agreement that was made in 1999, and out of the present financial perspective, and they will continue to benefit from the convergence funding agreed for the next financial perspective. Furthermore, the regional development funding in the UK will largely continue to be sourced directly from the UK Government, not from the European Union. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) and the hon. Member for Stone(Mr. Cash) made speeches rather different from those of my hon. Friends the Members for Leicester, East and for Caerphilly. They both made rather wide-ranging speeches—indeed, they sometimes ranged rather wide of the motion that we are debating—and there was a degree of common ground between them. The hon. Member for Stone repeatedly accused the Government of misrepresenting the budget figures. He did so in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe, and again in his speech. In each case, he cited the Budget Commissioner. My right hon. Friend the Minister made it very clear that the Commissioner’s figures on the total budget included counting programmes that are not part of the way in which the European Union calculates its budget. Although she is the Budget Commissioner, Mrs. Grybauskaite’s figures are, sadly, incorrect. No other member state, or the Commission, at any time during the financial negotiations assessed the budget in the way that she now pretends to do.